Make the heart of this people fat
Gross and heavy, stupid and unteachable, hard and obdurate; which
is sometimes done by the preaching of the Gospel, through the
wickedness of man's heart, that being the savour of death unto
death to some, just as the sun hardens the clay; or declare that
their hearts are thus gross and stupid; or that I will give them
up to a judicial hardness of heart: and make their ears
heavy:
that they cannot hear the word, so as to understand it; they
having stopped the ear, and plucked away the shoulder, it is in
righteous judgment that they are given up to such an
insensibility as not to be capable of hearing and understanding
what is delivered in the ministry of the word: and shut
their eyes;
they having wilfully shut their own eyes against all evidence of
the Messiah, and the truth of his doctrines, they are given up to
a judicial blindness; which still continues upon them, and will
until the fulness of the Gentiles is brought in: lest they
see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and
understated with their heart;
though only in a notional way, the things relating to the
Messiah, the truths of the Gospel, and the ordinances thereof,
and what may belong to their outward peace: and
convert;
or turn themselves by external repentance and reformation:
and be healed:
or forgiven in such sense as to be preserved from national ruin;
which God willed not; for seeing they went such great lengths in
sin, in rejecting the Messiah, and his Gospel, they were given up
to a reprobate mind, to do things that were not convenient, that
they might be destroyed; which destruction is after prophesied
of.